Entering Stage Right, Romney Moved to Center

He used the first presidential debate to speak out forcefully to its wide television audience against the idea of cutting taxes for the wealthy, noting that “high-income people are doing just fine in this economy.” Asked if there was too much government regulation, he answered, “Regulation is essential.” And he praised the Massachusetts health care bill, calling it a “model for the nation.”

These are all things that President Obama says occasionally on the campaign trail. But in this case, the lines were uttered at the debate Wednesday night in Denver by his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney.

Mr. Romney ran to the right in the Republican primaries in 2008 and this year, describing himself this winter as having been a “severely conservative” governor. This week, he pivoted to the center, as many political analysts had long expected him to do, seeking to appeal to more centrist general election voters. In doing so, Mr. Romney used striking new language to describe his policy proposals on taxes, education and health care in ways that may assuage independent voters — but which may be sowing confusion about how Mr. Romney would govern.

Mr. Romney suggested at the debate that while he would repeal the president’s health care law, he would retain one of its most popular provisions, saying, “I do have a plan that deals with people with pre-existing conditions.” But his plan could exclude millions of people, since it would explicitly guarantee insurance only if they have maintained coverage with no significant lapses.

Mr. Romney also said at the debate, “I don’t have any plan to cut education funding and grants that go to people going to college,” but his education plan says he would “refocus Pell Grant dollars on the students that need them most and place the program on a responsible long-term path,” suggesting that fewer people would qualify.

The Romney campaign rejected the notion that Mr. Romney had shifted to the middle in tone or substance to woo independents, noting that he said little in the debate that he had not said before. In describing Massachusetts’ health care law as “a model for the nation, state by state,” aides noted, he was reaffirming his position that states, and not the federal government, should make such decisions individually. And they noted that Mr. Romney’s debate performance was praised by many conservatives — Rush Limbaugh, Erick Erickson of RedState.com, William Kristol of The Weekly Standard — who have been critical of him in the past.

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for the Romney campaign, said that Mr. Romney had spoken about his past bipartisanship to indicate his ability to get things done. “This idea of bipartisanship, sitting down with people across the aisle and working on all these issues together, that’s something that appeals not only to people in the middle who are undecided, but to people on either side who look at a Washington that is not getting anything done,” Mr. Madden said.

But Mr. Romney’s change in tone on taxes was especially striking. He wants to cut income tax rates across the board by 20 percent and make up for the lost revenue by eliminating or reducing tax breaks — without raising the share of taxes paid by the middle class. A number of economists and independent analysts have said that it is not possible to achieve all of those goals, because cutting everyone’s taxes would result in the loss of so much revenue that it could not be made it up without raising taxes on middle-income Americans by ending some of their tax breaks, too.

While Mr. Romney has always said that his proposal was designed to be revenue neutral, because the cut in tax rates would be offset by the reduction in tax breaks, he sometimes described his plan as a tax “cut” when facing conservative opponents during the Republican primaries.

When Rick Santorum charged at a debate this winter that Mr. Romney might raise taxes on “the top 1 percent,” Mr. Romney countered, “We’re going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent.”

At Wednesday night’s debate he used different language. “I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people,” he said. “High-income people are doing just fine in this economy. They’ll do fine whether you’re president or I am.”

And he faulted Mr. Obama for describing his plan as a tax cut for the rich, saying, “It’s going to take a different path, not the one we’ve been on, not the one the president describes as a top-down, cut-taxes-for-the-rich — that’s not what I’m going to do.”

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Democrats seized on Mr. Romney’s shift, after many pundits proclaimed that Mr. Obama had done poorly in the debate. Mr. Obama said at a rally in Denver on Thursday morning that he had gone on stage at the debate and “met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney.”

“But it couldn’t have been Mitt Romney,” he said, “because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy.”

The Romney campaign dismissed the criticisms, suggesting that Democrats were simply trying to change the subject from the president’s poorly received debate performance. “In full damage-control mode, President Obama today offered no defense of his record and no vision for the future,” Ryan Williams, a Romney campaign spokesman, said in a statement.

It is difficult to assess Mr. Romney’s tax plans because he has declined to name which deductions he would reduce, or to detail how his plan would work for different incomes — making his policy akin to what scientists call a “nonfalsifiable proposition,” since it does not contain enough detail to fully test.

This week Mr. Romney rolled out a few new — and, at times, contradictory — specifics. He suggested on Monday that one way to increase revenue would be to cap the total amount of deductions any taxpayer could claim. Currently, there is no cap on the total amount of deductions a taxpayer can claim for items like mortgage interest, charitable deductions and state and local taxes. Under Mr. Romney’s proposal, taxpayers could not deduct more than a set number, raising their taxable income and, therefore, their tax bills.

But the possible limit he first mentioned, $17,000, would raise only a small fraction of what the across-the-board tax rate cuts would cost and could result in tax increases on millions of middle-class families, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. By the time the issue was raised in the debate Wednesday night, Mr. Romney’s position was once again in flux.

“Make up a number,” he said at the debate. “Twenty-five thousand. $50,000. Anybody can have deductions up to that amount. And then that number disappears for high-income people.”

Mr. Obama objected that Mr. Romney’s cuts would cost $5 trillion over a decade and disproportionately benefit the wealthy and cost the middle class.

“It is not possible to come up with enough deductions and loopholes that only affect high-income individuals to avoid either raising the deficit or burdening the middle class,” he said. “It’s math. It’s arithmetic.”

Mr. Romney ceded no ground, saying, “No economist can say, ‘Mitt Romney’s tax plan adds five trillion’ if I say I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan.”

Ashley Parker contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on October 5, 2012, on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Entering Stage Right, Romney Moved to Center. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe